


historia de la malhablada

by shortitude



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Gen, Here Be Some Angst, I had to put a T-rating because Let Raven Reyes Curse, Multilingual Raven Reyes, and a blink and you'll miss it BellRaven, minor mentions of other characters in the nsw exchange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-23
Updated: 2016-09-23
Packaged: 2018-08-16 21:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8117980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortitude/pseuds/shortitude
Summary: Raven Reyes and how she learned, knew, spoke, forgot and then picked Spanish back up again.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [semele](https://archiveofourown.org/users/semele/gifts).



> **Prompt 2:** Raven Reyes + bilinguality. My favorite scenario is that she avoids speaking Spanish, because that’s the language of her childhood and her mother, but she comes to terms with it for herself on the ground, but if you have a different take, I’m happy to be convinced! 
> 
> I write peninsular Spanish, so any mistakes in cusswords are from the lack of contact with them in my short, but full of cursing, life. There's a handy little list of translations at the end ;)

1.

When Raven Reyes is born, she is so quiet that the doctor thinks she's not breathing; it's not until the first primitive slap that the baby opens her eyes, and her mouth, and howls with indignation. 

Her mother thinks it sounds like the crow of a raven, not that she's heard it ever, but that becomes her name. 

Rosa stays sober those first years, motivated by new life, by her inquisitive baby girl, with the big brown eyes and the trill of a laugh. 

"Eres un pajarito, a que sí? Mi pequeño pajarito," Rosa whispers to her in the language of her grandmother, and her grandmother's grandmother. 

"Ito," little Raven echoes after her, and laughs.

2\. 

Before Rosa falls into the bottom of a bottle again, to her daughter she is _mamá_.

It takes Raven fifteen years to switch from that to Rosa, or to a brittle-snapped _mom_. She keeps her hopes up for that long, until her mother dies at the bottom of a bottle and she stops having the hope that she'll be better and do better by her any time soon.

3\. 

Finn asks her what else she can say in Spanish, fascinated by the way Raven clings onto a past of ancestors that weren't ever there for her anyway. Hes just heard her curse up a storm, in a language he didn't understand, and it sounded very creative for a seventeen year old. 

(Another thing she inherited from her mother.)

Finn asks her how to say I love you in Spanish. 

"Te amo," Raven murmurs, shyly, looking at him because it's true. 

He smiles and hands her a pendant of a bird, and parrots it back at her in a reproachable accent. _Te amo._

And Raven believes it.

4.

On the ground, it never occurs to her to use Spanish. Nobody down here talks it, and the one person who knew enough words to know when she was cursing creatively under her breath is dead now. 

But after two hours of checkups and prodding by Jackson and Abby, she snaps. "Ya, chingada madre, ya!!"

Lincoln, who is in the room with them, bursts out into laughter. 

That's how Raven figures out she has something in common with the Grounders.

5.

They sort of end up naming her a spokesperson for negotiations with the Grounders against her own will. Because who cares how much the Grounders took from her, she can sort of speak their language, she can take one for the team.

Like she hasn't been doing that since coming down to the ground.

She can speak for the Arkers, but she doesn't have to be diplomatic for them. 

She becomes known as La Malhablada, which is at first said with disdain, then the sort of fondness reserved for spoiled brats, then endearment, then respect.

Of course, it takes her years to cultivate that respect, but she does it with constant hard work and a talent for cursing that gets more creative as years go by. 

6.

The truth is that you can't grow roots in space, though some had tried. When family trees became so diluted, and there was no way of going to visit your grandparents in the summer, the sentiment of where you came from stopped having weight. Soon, every generation came from the same place, the Ark; the only difference became the stations, Factory and Alpha worn like a badge of honor and identity both. 

On the ground, Raven calls herself three things. 

First, she's _del Arca_ ; she's a sky person, she's an heir of the stars and space dust. She grew up in perpetual night, with constellations learnt from books, not from looking up.

Second, she's a _delincuente_ ; what she tells Grounders she is, when they ask in broken, barely understandable Spanish, if she belongs to the people of Arkadia, with a mean glance towards Abby and Kane. She's a pawn, as she's always been, until she sees there is worth in rebelling, and pleasure to be taken from doing it under their noses, without them realising it. 

Third is the name she finds when the old lady who calls her Malhablada gives her a map. She points to a place on it and says "Yo, de aquí." 

There's a river on the map inscribed as river of silver. Raven nods, though she doesn't see how this fragile old lady made it all the way to New Tondc from Argentina. Maybe her family did, she muses, when the lady points to another point higher up. "Vos. Aquí." 

_Mexicana_ , though she's got nothing to prove it, fits her like a glove.

7.

The day they sign the third trade treaty with the southern Grounders, gifts are exchanged. The Chancellor receives a book on the myths he is so fond of, and Raven doesn't translate to him that they've called him an old man for his tastes. 

It wouldn't be anything she hasn't told him before, anyway. 

Raven receives a gift, too, though she is not a part of the Council. Judging by the proud grin on his face, Bellamy doesn't seem to mind one bit. 

It's a small boy that delivers it, one with Lincoln's eyes and -- she knows -- Octavia's temper. 

He tells her in trigedasleng, "It's you, right?" 

The book is a thin thing, fragile brown pages worn down by time. The title is barely visible on the cover, so she reads it on the first page. _El cuervo, por Edgar Allen Poe._

She has had years to learn trigedasleng better than she has been able to talk Spanish, but this word comes easy to her. 

"Gracias, pequeñito."

 _Ito,_ echoes baby Raven from the past, in a memory that's so fleeting, that Raven thinks it's a dream.

**Author's Note:**

> **from español into english:**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Eres un pajarito, a que sí? Mi pequeño pajarito. (You're a little bird, aren't you? My little birdy.)  
> Ya, chingada madre, ya!! (Enough, motherfucker, enough)  
> La Malhablada (the ill-spoken one; simply put - that girl who curses a lot)  
> Yo, de aquí (Me, from here) Vos, aquí (you, here).


End file.
